1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computing systems, and more specifically, to various embodiments for efficient data transfer in computing systems implementing metadata sharing in a grid network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data is storable on disks or flash storage drives. Storage drives can exist as a solo entity, or as part of a larger network storage environment. It is not uncommon for groups of several individual computers or clusters, to facilitate data storage and transfer.
Concerning a data transfer, the concept is generally the same regardless of medium, a file is broken into pieces which are subsequently transferred over a network. The keys to increasing the productivity, speed and rate of a file transfer are to send and receive faster. The focal point of innovations in file transfers have been the pipe and devices themselves. Generally, no preparation of the actual data is ever necessary or implemented. With the increase of device speeds, file transfer speeds have increased, but so has the width of the pipe. No groundwork is laid in the event a user wants to send an additional file or a multitude of additional files.
In a data transfer, a transferring unit transfers an entire copy of a file to a receiving unit. This occurs even in instances where a file is only slightly updated from a previous version, the transferring unit transfers the entire file to the receiving unit, which then replaces the old file with the updated file. Transferring an entire file takes time, especially if the file is large. The present invention proposes solutions to the limitations that are inherent in the prior art.